This is a curious combination of capability and caution that usually becomes balanced over time. One the one hand, there is a great sense of duty and reserve that is aligned to being very serious about achieving one’s ambitions. This often sits side by side with a highly developed sensuality, easily able to appreciate the pleasures of life.

Often with this Ascendant, there is a natural tendency to be at times stern, authoritative, strict and serious esepcially with the self. The mastery of one’s material resources is generally a prime concern. This serious, recriminating tone is often turned inward. Thus you can be far harder on yourself than you are on anyone else. Other people will consider you a harsh task master or a capable leader, and you are likely to be well respected for your capacity for hard work, seriousness and prolonged focus. Treating yourself as a member of staff will help. Would you punish and criticize others as harshly as you do yourself? In the course of a day you are likely to do ten things, eight of which you will do very well. Yet at the end of the day it is the two you didn’t master, the two that were less than perfect that you will remember and punish yourself for. Perhaps you need to treat yourself as a growing, and eventually profitable organization, instead of a paramilitary training camp?

You need to find ways to make practical and efficient use of the resources that are available to you, and ultimately master your world. To do this, you need to cautiously plan and structure your approach to life in order to meet the requirements of the rather fatherly voice inside of you that is urging you on toward success and achievement.

Achievement may be slow to come, but certain, owing to your careful, methodical planning and practice. Saturn, your ruler, is also known as Father Time, and he teaches his valuable lessons through patience, commitment and endurance. Hardship and frustration teach the lessons of bending the will to serve a higher purpose, and teach you to refine your ambitions whilst developing long-term staying power. Thus limits, laws and structures must be recognized and obeyed. There is a need to make something of oneself; and this will become a key driving aim in life. Submitting the personality to the need for order, structure and discipline will lead to long term satisfaction and contentment.

Publicly, there may be a great sense of reserve, decorum and appropriate social codes, but behind closed doors, another story unfolds that leaves the sober side far behind. Here, we meet the principles of Cronos (Saturn), God of Time, Limitation and Structure together with Capricorn’s other ruler Saturnalia, God of Earthly Pleasures and Delights. Capricorn rising individuals find their sense of purpose and inner balance through developing both sides of their nature, whilst reminding themselves that they are far more capable than they let themselves believe.

The potential to enjoy deeply the senses and the body is also very present. Those with Capricorn rising need to let themselves explore their bodies, and their potential for sensual pleasure. Fortunately, this is much more easily achieved, once the false and crippling limitations of guilt and self-repression have been removed. This Ascendant also brings great sensitivity to the needs and feelings of those held close, and the ideal partner is one who can provide plenty of soft ‘mothering’ and nurturing as a balance to all the apparent hardness and diffidence of the ‘capable’ Capricorn mask.

Sometimes the innate expectation that life must be hard makes things far more difficult than need be. We meet what we expect in the world, and Capricorn rising folks often expect hardship and limitation to greet them at every turn. These beliefs can lead to difficulty in realising one’s goals, for the belief that life must be hard for you often sets things up so that they are! Learning to recognize your need for hard work and discipline, without seeing oneself as somehow under the thumb of Cruel Fate, helps. Also putting your ambitions into perspective is a good managerial move. You are a work in progress and are highly likely to succeed. Affirming that you are able to create what you need EASILY in your life and taking time to enjoy its’ ample pleasures will help to overcome these self-imposed limitations.